Two Prisoners Escape

At least two prisoners who were awaiting trial escaped from Rikers Island on Saturday while busloads of family members were visiting inmates, the police said.

One of the prisoners was caught in a channel of the East River as he attempted to swim to freedom. The second was still missing, authorities said.

Police spokeswoman Kathy Kelly said the escapes occurred about 10:45 a.m. Saturday. The men apparently broke through a wall and fled, she said.

SOUTH

Senator's aide gets bomb

WASHINGTON - An aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was slightly injured on Friday evening when a package exploded as he opened it at his apartment.

Forensic experts from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said that the aide, Will Smith, escaped serious injuries because only a detonating device exploded, not the bomb itself.

Investigators tentatively ruled out a political motive or an attack by the serial bomber in the Unabom case.

USAir, attendants agree

ARLINGTON, Va. - USAir Group said on Saturday it has reached agreement in principle with the Association of Flight Attendants on wage and other concessions in exchange for financial returns and participation in governance of the company.

The airline did not elaborate on the specific provisions of the agreement.

NAACP audit held up

BALTIMORE - In her first board meeting as NAACP chairwoman, Myrlie Evers-Williams said on Saturday that an audit expected to detail how the group was in debt won't be released until June.

Even then, the public may not see it. Some members had hoped the report would be released on Saturday, but the board has yet to decide whether to make it public, as Evers-Williams has urged.

The accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand has not completed the audit; members criticized in it sought more time to reply, said the NAACP's general counsel, Dennis Hays.

MIDWEST

Woman guilty in hit case

JEFFERSON, Wis. - A former high school teacher's aide was convicted on Saturday of bribing three teen-agers with cash and the promise of more riches to kill her husband.

Diane Borchardt, 46, who was in a bitter divorce fight, was convicted of recruiting the boys with $600 and promising them cars, jewelry and $20,000 from her estranged husband's life insurance. She awaits sentencing to a mandatory life term on her murder conviction.

The three youths were convicted in separate trials of sneaking into the couple's home on April 3, 1994, and shooting Ruben Borchardt to death.

Ostrich served at show

CHICAGO - Ostrich fillets and burgers are making an appearance at the National Restaurant Show at Chicago's McCormick Place, and processors are hoping consumers soon will find such dishes on menus.

"It tastes like beef," Jerry Merck, a spokesman for Blue Ridge Ostrich Ranch in Richardson, Texas, said at the trade show, which runs through Wednesday.

WEST

Body found under slide

SEATTLE - Rescue workers searching through a huge rock slide that buried a quarry near Wenatchee, Wash., found the body of a young boy, officials said Saturday.

The boy had last been seen Friday morning in a converted bus that had served as an office when a 150-yard wall of stone and earth collapsed into the quarry.

Chelan County fire department spokeswoman Suzie Thompson said a quarry worker who had been operating a rock-crushing machine at the time of the avalanche was still missing.

Egg switch reported

SANTA ANA, Calif. - The director of a fertility clinic took eggs from a patient without her consent and gave them to another woman who had a baby about nine months later, The Orange County Register reported on Friday.

Medical records show that three eggs were taken from the woman in the early 1990s and given to the second patient two days later. The records do not show whose sperm fertilized the eggs.

The fertility clinic, The Center for Reproductive Health, is the focus of investigations into allegations that doctors did research on patients without approval.

Fleiss sentencing delayed

LOS ANGELES - Sentencing of Heidi Fleiss was postponed until Wednesday after her lawyers said they wanted to work out a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.

Fleiss was to be sentenced on Friday on three state pandering counts, which carry a penalty of up to eight years and eight months in prison.